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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28706388">Wave Your Flag</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/earthmylikeness/pseuds/earthmylikeness'>earthmylikeness</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Apex Legends (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Drinking, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Head Injury, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 09:28:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,678</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28706388</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/earthmylikeness/pseuds/earthmylikeness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Crypto could knock him out, right now, even without his drone. He could. He should. This was unprecedented; no one has ever gotten this close to him in years.</i>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Crypto | Park Tae Joon/Mirage | Elliott Witt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>69</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Wave Your Flag</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>(Written a million years ago, when <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEAWC9eK1Ts">this cinematic</a> came out.)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It wasn’t the best match of his career, not by a long shot.</p><p>He’s had a few dodgy ones, especially the ones involving the Idiot - whether by proxy or in opposition. He couldn’t catch a break with him, his dumb, bright aura obscuring Crypto’s vision every time he gets a clear shot. A sun glare piercing through Crypto’s carefully-kept plans.</p><p>Crypto made a point not to think about it, not usually and certainly not now - hand held gingerly at his leaking waist and head rattling on its hinges from shellshock. There are footsteps everywhere and it’s like the nightmare again, that terminal memory.</p><p>So it’s more than a little inconvenient whenever Crypto <em>does</em> encounter the fool in question, on and off the grounds, in his face and in his business. Mirage, a rich boy with a penchant for cheap thrills, held rent at the top of the charts in the Apex Games, and stood directly in the line of Crypto’s ascent and eventual infiltration into the elite class.</p><p>And if that wasn’t enough, Mystik continued to have a soft spot for the bastard and mentioned sometimes in her infrequent letters how she enjoyed when they played together. It had grated on Crypto enough that his attitude bled into the games - Mirage and him always sniping at each other in the comms, calling names, annoying their third. Forgoing getting frags and getting out for getting the last word in.</p><p>Crypto held issue with Mirage’s constantly running mouth, his arrogance, his brash risk-taking bringing hellfire upon his team at every chance. Mirage is a full-time liability, testing the odds and mortal fate itself for a golden moment in the spotlight - and Crypto fantasizes about killing him most every time he closes his eyes, he won’t lie.</p><p>Mirage likely held issue with Crypto’s issues with Mirage, himself being, in his own words, “a perfect specimen”. Crypto <em>wishes</em>, he says - and by god, Crypto does.</p><p>What Crypto wouldn’t give to just be rid of him, from his games, his head - this yellow smudge on his clean, distant life, untouched by drama, by relationships. Mirage’s too-bright existence ever present in his waking hours, in his private spaces, as long as he participated in these games. As long as he participated in the legend, written live with the blood of its players.</p><p>Crypto just wishes Mirage would stop sitting on his damn PC at his drop ship station, spilling fucking cheese puffs on his keyboards. Just <em>once</em>.</p><p>Crypto had a mission, a bigger picture than winning some pissing contest every other week, and one he couldn’t let himself get distracted from by any old charming hooligan that dared flirt with him. And it’s truly perfect that on this, not-the-best-match-of-his-career, he should have such luck.</p><p>He’s cornered in the look-out point in the Cascades when they meet. His whole team went down during the ill-advised separation they’d called on to get better sight-lines on the next circle, and Crypto had to listen to their frantic calls for aid over the radio as he took shots from all sides.</p><p>He’d waited a bit for the carnage to die down before he slid down the ladder chute into the server rooms - thinking of doubling back to grab Wraith’s tag, still active and pinging on the ground floor - only to find Mirage, standing in the middle of the room, like he’s lost.</p><p>Mirage spins around to see him, and his arm drops a little, a pull of breath through his teeth at the sight.</p><p>Crypto probably looks it, a fairly-cauterized gash on his right side from an arc star earlier, and a drained holoarmor blipping incessantly in his comms. “젠장,” Crypto huffs, knuckles white around the rung of the ladder and his glock, debating whether to climb back up, out into the hostile world.</p><p>“Well, well, well, how the turn-tables…” Mirage curdles, grin bright like a half moon despite the nicks on his face - chips on a Ferrari. In certain lights, maybe he wasn’t so old-looking. “You alone, kid?”</p><p>“Soon to be,” Crypto grits, raising the Wingman to counter Mirage’s lowered one. “Better think fast.”</p><p>But Mirage isn’t fazed, not like last time; the first time - (Crypto training his sights right over Mirage’s heart, only as a joke, as a warning.) He just shakes his head a little, like Crypto’s being nonsensical, a child - it’s starkly annoying. Despite their looks, Crypto was his senior, and back where he was raised that kind of thing mattered.</p><p>Mirage somehow knows that Crypto isn’t gonna shoot him, even before Crypto does (and how). His search-light eyes look round the room instead for traps or a sign of life.</p><p>“You didn’t see me coming? I am pretty sneaky,” he’s saying, faux-cocky, but gets interrupted: Shots outside, energy mags, piercing through the sound barrier like whistles.</p><p>Crypto snaps his eyes back on Mirage like an accusation, but Mirage doesn’t react; just has a finger to his lips, widened eyes.</p><p>“You in there, yapdog?” It’s Caustic, three yards away. It was Mirage’s squad out there. Crypto should’ve figured Mirage had backup, it explained why he didn’t look more nervous than he did. Or at the least more chatty.</p><p>Crypto pulls the hammer, stomach falling through the ground. He takes a step back, his free hand reaching dumbly behind him for his drone that’s not there - that’s lying totalled back in Relay where he’d left it - but Mirage follows in step, one hand out to steady, palm open between bullet and heart.</p><p>“Tango didn’t tap out — there’s another one nearby,” a different voice says, hard and clipped. The soldier.</p><p>Mirage is uncharacteristically quiet, back to door. He should’ve called out by now, alerted the others to the foolishly cornered Crypto, with his signature smug deprecation. Footsteps approach and the sound of dragging, closer still.</p><p>Crypto aims at the door then back at Mirage, swallows around the marble in his throat; there are flashes of blue and red behind his eyes, the familiar feeling of being surrounded, outnumbered — he’s tied this down, he was over it, he disappeared-</p><p>And suddenly Mirage is right there - somehow dodging through the cracks in Crypto’s splintering vision - hard hands at Crypto’s collar and square on his chest as he pushes him back, back, through the cargo room door, behind the plastic curtains, until they both hit resistance.</p><p>“What the fuck,” Crypto’s hissing, arm pulling up to cuff Mirage by his throat, fumble roughly at the reflective rings on his arm — but a strong grip at his wrist belays it as they slip behind a column, hiding in the shadow of a tarp that’s hanging by a thread.</p><p>“Shhhh, cool it, cool it, cool it,” Mirage is saying, right by his ear. Crypto feels a chill at the warm breath, shoulders them apart roughly — they meet eyes, a shock, landing like short-circuit down Crypto’s spine. Mirage quirks a brow, mouth still an odd tilt, “I’d like to keep my reputation as a stone-cold killer intact, if you don’t mind.”</p><p>And before Crypto could begin to roll his eyes, he sees the air around them shimmer - interference on the water, the double-image effect blinding him momentarily: Mirage’s cloaking.</p><p>The hangar doors bang open, then. “Mirage, fall in,” the soldier growls, voice doubling in the comms trickling from Mirage’s ear. Caustic follows shortly, places a trap by the hall as he walks in, flinging empty mags at the corners, clanging.</p><p>Crypto fidgets in the cage of Mirage’s arms, hitching breath under the weight - and Mirage claps a hand over his mouth, face an inch from Crypto’s own.</p><p>Mirage’s hurt, Crypto notices in mildly panicked observation; a trickle of blood falling like a black river from beneath his goggles, hanging precariously at his brow. A head injury. Which explained the odd lilt to his voice, his quiet, burrowing weight.</p><p>Crypto could knock him out, right now, even without his drone. He could. He should. This was unprecedented; no one has ever gotten this close to him in years.</p><p>“Swore he ran in here,” Caustic coughs, his steps heavy near the broken-down server room they are hiding in. There is a thump like a deathbox against the metal floors. “This one’s still live so the third should be coming anytime now - unless it’s a little coward rat,” Caustic laughs through a gurgle — and Crypto shifts in Mirage’s grip, feeling sick. Mirage’s heavy head is an anchor on his shoulder, the slow tide of his breath stilling the turn of Crypto's stomach.</p><p>“Shut it, maggot,” Bangalore says, cocking her gun, “I’m not seeing a change in Mirage’s vitals, but his comms must be out. Search those rooms for the live one, I’ll check the control center.”</p><p>“Confirmed,” Caustic growls, his uneven steps drawing closer. The creak of the metal flooring like a cheap horror film.</p><p>Crypto holds his breath as the stink of toxins threaten his sinuses, and the sharp concave of his chest brings Mirage even closer; his forelock tickling Crypto’s neck, breath coming warm and oddly fast against his shoulder.</p><p>Caustic’s steps stop by the column that would be shading Mirage from view, if it weren’t also for the cloaking. He inhales before coughing violently, startling Crypto pretty badly. <em>Fucking creep</em>, he thinks.</p><p>Crypto waits until Caustic moves away and into the next room to breathe out. He feels Mirage shift on his feet, arm resting heavily on Crypto’s shoulder - and Crypto almost nudges him, checks his face to see if he’s fallen asleep; a bad idea if he’d truly been hit in the head - not, that it’s Crypto’s concern. He’s jerked out of the non-worry at the clamor down the hall.</p><p>“Well?” Bangalore barks, to which Caustic hisses, “Nothing.”</p><p>There’s a short silence where it’s just the sound of Mirage’s hoarse breathing. “He probably got distracted chasing a hit,” the cop says, “We’ll rendezvous at the final circle, if he’s still alive.”</p><p>Caustic spits into his own mask in response, kicking the now silent deathbox across the floor. “Rat,” he says again, and Mirage’s hand is already curling around Crypto’s collar, restraining his rabid pulse, his perpetual indignance.</p><p>“Fall out,” Bangalore calls, taking the lead. Both Crypto and Mirage wait patiently, bated - like students in detention hall - until the steps disappear fully. And finally, finally they pull apart the few, crucial inches.</p><p>The whirring of the devices on Mirage’s suit stills, and the iridescent fog around them return to their dull transparency. Crypto loosens his tense shoulders, scans around a little distractedly for any further danger, largely avoiding Mirage’s dumb head that has lifted to find his in their dim corner of the world.</p><p>“Now we’re even, for the uh, train thing,” Mirage begins, voice low, a curl falling in his lidded eyes. He looks distinctly different from this angle, this proximity. Crypto unfocuses from Mirage’s crooked, smug smirk for a damn minute to notice his hand fiddling unsubtly at the cuff of Crypto’s coat - trying to take the gun off him. “Actually I’d say you owe me one, now. You weren’t even on my team this time.”</p><p>“I didn’t ask for-“ Crypto starts, catching the look in Mirage’s eyes - gleeful and a little unhinged, and far, far too close - shakes his head a little, almost scratching his nose on Mirage’s beard. “Let, go,” Crypto tries to raise his Wingman hand again, but it’s held in the vice of Mirage’s grip.</p><p>“Not gonna do that, you’re gonna shoot me in the back,” Mirage surmises accurately. “Let’s say this is for the drink I was gonna buy you, since, turns out, the criminal genius mastra-uh mastermind behind the great hack of the Apex games never goes out-”</p><p>“That’s not-“ Crypto snaps, but stops as Mirage leans his forehead a little drunkenly against Crypto’s temple, a low pull in his gut at the contact, static under his skin, “Hey. Hey, Witt. You’re-”</p><p>“-staying in his little- master-man cave, airing out everyone’s dirty laundry,” Mirage is muttering, tongue swiping quick across his lip, throwing a hazy look back at the door, distracted - “a little unfair don’t you think- You knowing mine and everyone’s secrets and us knowing nothing about you. What, you got some shady history you don’t wann-“</p><p>Crypto pulls Mirage’s face around by the jaw, pushes in a bit, and in, and kisses him — Mirage’s lips a little dry against his, agape with surprise as Crypto closes over them — an alarm sounding off a thousand miles away, signalling a fractional shrinking of the world.</p><p>No reason, just to shut him up. It works pretty well.</p><p>It’s barely a graze, just a touch - and Mirage almost immediately leans back, practically a flinch. Crypto nearly follows him in a kind of defiance, but gets it god damn together.</p><p>Crypto shuts his eyes against the belated flare of <em>shit</em> and regret and — god, it has been a while since he’d been even this close with anyone. One slightest, briefest bout of physical proximity and gentle rough-housing and Crypto and his addled, wanton, fucked-up brain was mistaking it for intimacy. He felt a fool, (what’s fucking new) and very young (worst timing) and needed to go. Now.</p><p>But Mirage is a stone, hands still firm at Crypto’s wrist and shoulder keeping him from bolting, though his eyes have softened - warm and focused and pinning Crypto to the wall. A tongue tip resting against the top teeth, considering. Crypto’s eyes stick there, chest shaking at the vision, beating double-time: far too late to be of much warning.</p><p>“Huh,” Mirage mumbles, wavering back in a little on uneven steps. “Weird. I’ll take it.”</p><p>Crypto’s head tips backwards, exhausted, chin hitting Mirage’s cheek, arm squeezed uncomfortably between their chests. It has been a <em>day</em>, and the way Mirage is holding him up, heated against the chilled concrete, is doing something bad to his constitution.</p><p>Mirage’s mouth is somehow at his ear, breaths coming wide and slow against the shell. His teeth graze on the side of his throat, a quick gust burning his skin as his hands lower to Crypto’s ribs like magnets.</p><p>Crypto notices that his own hand is finally free, but it just drops like an anchor. Wingman hung loose in its grip as Mirage sways them side to side, his brows furrowed in muted pain and chest running like a false-starting engine.</p><p>“I’ll probably shoot you in the back,” Crypto admits, leaning his forehead a bit on the side of Mirage’s face, the blood getting on him too.</p><p>“Can’t help that,” Mirage says, rough and low, banking on some invisible edge.</p><p>“You’re heavy, and you have a head injury,” Crypto explains, levering himself off the wall, curling his back — but Mirage stills him with a knee to the thigh, tips his head back by a hand at his jaw - so soft and careful Crypto could almost feel it through the metal.</p><p>“Can’t help that either,” he mumbles before leaning in again.</p><p>Mirage kisses him gently, like something at the end of a date. His tongue slides in, smooth and hot and grazing against Crypto’s, once and once more.</p><p>Mirage is better at this than almost everything else. Crypto feels a weird pang of jealousy at the surprisingly low-count of names, which he’d (reluctantly) read on Mirage’s file, with whom Mirage had been previously entangled. The talent was either inherent, like his many other less desirable attributes, or that was some practice he’d gotten - fuck.</p><p>Mirage could clearly feel Crypto losing it - balking a little at the moment, freezing up by the second - and he slides a hard hand around Crypto’s head, steadying, places shallow pecks against Crypto’s cheek, his chin, the tender swatch of skin between his jaw and throat, dragging him back down. It works.</p><p>“Mn,” Crypto protests meekly, before opening his mouth fully to let Mirage in again, kissing him back, tasting metal. And then time blurs.</p><p>Mirage has bested him this time, and Crypto figures - with a shaky grin, pulled apart by Mirage’s careful teeth - it would not be the last. But hell if Crypto will go down without some say.</p><p>Crypto cuts Mirage off with a bite on the soft inner part of his lip, Mirage making a rearing noise, raspy, “Ow.”</p><p>Crypto catches his breath, scoffing a little - and that seems to catch Mirage off guard more than everything else. “You’re too soft for this,” he assesses, calming down.</p><p>“What, the games? Or kissing you?” Mirage says, voice light and scratched up - eyes crossing through the haze of a definite concussion and likely something else — “Come on, give it to me again. One more, for the road.”</p><p>“You’re gonna get yourself killed,” Crypto’s fully laughing now, despite himself, putting a fist between their chests and feeling the twin drums beating.</p><p>Mirage shrugs with one shoulder, eyes lidded and riveted on Crypto’s mouth, “Well, we’re all gonna die young. Might as well enjoy the ride down,” and with a flicker of lashes and a shudder, Mirage opens his mouth across Crypto’s bottom lip, his chin, his fake jaw, grinds his leg hard against Crypto’s inner thigh, up between their increasingly unsteady legs.</p><p>Crypto gasps, gritting his teeth against the feeling. “Ah, fuck.” He drags his hands against Mirage’s sides, groaning out loud, failing to give a shit.</p><p>“Also, what do you care about that?” Mirage is asking, incredulous, as Crypto buries his face in the pristinely-kempt beard, “Thought you couldn’t stand me. Which is par for course, by the way, you’re not special.”</p><p>“Don’t be an idiot,” Crypto moans, teeth a trap around his lip. His hands find purchase at the back of Mirage’s head, fingers shaky and reverently sunk into his curls. Crypto feels him reel under the dragging pull.</p><p>Mirage is moving against him, slow but urgent, suddenly allowed - mouth a gash of heat, “You think you’re so mean, so tough, you’re just a pup — god-”</p><p>Mirage wraps a shaky hand around Crypto, then, through his pants - Crypto’s mind clapping to white - his other hand, tender on Crypto’s face, rough thumb pulling down his lip, opening him up for Mirage like a fucking blushing flower.</p><p>And Crypto breathes out, overwhelmed: “Stop, man,” - and Mirage does immediately.</p><p>Pulls back like a tide, falling away from Crypto with a gust of cold, basement air - Crypto feels it like an execution.</p><p>“Sorry, I -” and Mirage almost tips back, eyes rolling from the abrupt movement. Crypto links their arms before he can topple backwards.</p><p>The room is silent save for their harsh breaths, ringing like an orchestra against the walls - the whistling sound of bullets miles away calling for penalty.</p><p>Both of them are a sight - mouths pink and glistening, cheeks caught red. Their hands are clasped together like sportsmen after a fair round.</p><p>“It’s fine,” Crypto assures dumbly, wiping his mouth - and it’s almost worth the mortification seeing Mirage smile a little in relief. “But you should fuck off before your psychopath friends come back.”</p><p>“Aw, are you worried?” Mirage’s voice is goading, despite him looking sucker-punched. His wrist hangs loose in Crypto’s hand, pulse thudding through the bones. “I don’t think you should be talking.”</p><p>“I’ll be fine,” Crypto looks away, feeling suddenly shy but mostly turned on to eleven. But this is neither the time nor the place; the horns blare another warning, the ring hot on their tail.</p><p>He grumbles something to that effect, as Mirage nods, thumbing Crypto’s chin a little longingly. Crypto cringes at the absolute softness of it all.</p><p>“Alright,” Mirage relents, shrugging, shaking off the arousal clearly still high on his limbs. He rubs out the red from his own ruddy cheeks as he steps backwards towards the ladder, the sharp beam of light. “Good luck with the game. You’re hot. Hope you find a gun or something.”</p><p>And it takes Crypto a second, unfortunately. Looking down at his idiot, empty hands and back up at Mirage’s idiot, beaming face - his arms held up in surrender, with Crypto’s Wingman spinning on a finger.</p><p>“시-발,” Crypto sighs. It’s a little too late in the game for embarrassment, he figures.</p><p>“Hah, now who’s the idiot?” Mirage gloats, before tripping up the ladder; it’s cute, god help him. Crypto decides, in his magnanimous, charitable mood - a halfy in his pants and lips stinging - to give him a ten-second head start.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It’s kind of a dive, this joint off of main that sits on the ground floor of an ancient, expensive hotel housing the local mob pawns. It’s bright with flashing lights, full of rowdy idiots, bass booming beneath his feet like tectonic shifts. It’s all very… Witt.</p><p>Crypto knew Mirage owned a bar, the one he bought from his employer once he hit the big leagues. He knew that he was the son of Evelyn Witt, whose work Crypto once cribbed for his own holotech development, ages ago. Knew that she was staying at a dementia care home down a block from here. Knew Mirage visited the city on the weekends to see her.</p><p>He knew enough to avoid the whole business as well as possible. Which explained very little about what the hell he’s doing here, on a Saturday night, getting shoved by a sweaty, dancing crowd on his way to the bar — when he <em>should</em> be at his tiny bachelor apartment, eating bad takeout, profiling at least another dozen potential targets before passing out at 4AM.</p><p>“Hey, baby. Come here often?”</p><p>It’s been a whole ass day since Crypto has seen this mug, but nothing’s changed: It still grates on his sensitivities, too loud and too drawing, making him lose periphery vision like he’s already five drinks in. There’s a bandage around Mirage’s head, obscured beneath the dark muss, and it looks like an anomaly.</p><p>“If you value the conditions of all of your stupid paraphernalia, why don’t you not call me that,” Crypto says. He shifts on to a gross seat, feeling himself warm with every beat of the music, deafening and dreamlike. “Buy me that drink.”</p><p>“I thought I got you one already,” Mirage says, straight-faced, “A tall, cold drink of… yours truly.”</p><p>Crypto reddens, caught off guard, frowns as convincingly as he can at the row of bottles behind the bar. Mirage flashes teeth in the end, yielding — his bottom lip still has a tear in it, a little blue at the seam.</p><p>“How about another head injury?” Crypto suggests, clearing his throat.</p><p>“What, I’m disarming you! I’m disarming! Literally, as you know,” Mirage preens, spinning an imaginary Wingman in his hand, before opening a bottle of scotch with the same flourish, “and uh. You know. Because of my charm.”</p><p>Crypto rolls his eyes, but gladly takes the glass. “It won you the championship,” he nods at the Apex token pinned to Mirage’s jacket. They awarded it to the winners every week. Didn’t even give you free parking, but you got prize money, free drinks — didn’t help Mirage much; a rich boy with a bar.</p><p>“I like the attention,” Mirage explains, answering Crypto’s pitying look, scrubs a perfectly clean corner of the table with a dirty rag, “And the girls, of course, definitely the girls.”</p><p>Crypto hides a smile as Mirage sneaks a look to catch it — he then shakes his damn head at the absolutely obvious path of decision-making that has led himself here, to the very upstanding establishment owned by the man he’s kissed only 27 hours ago. He cringes inwardly over the drink, and fixes his eyes across the floor - a couple, swaying suggestively to the beat next to the bathroom, practically one form.</p><p>What would Mystik tell him now. Crypto, “getting out there”, at this age. Coming to a bar of all things, looking for action. She may drop dead in disbelief.</p><p>But years of hiding and voluntary solitude had gotten to him it seems. One little crack in the defenses by way of a truly inane, clandestine grope in the middle of a deadly arena, and they were crumbling like nothing. His entire make-up reverting back to its adolescent days, awkward and avoiding scrutiny like a puberty-ridden tween.</p><p>Mystik would tell him to live a little. Would tell him that she didn’t raise a sad, old hermit who couldn’t enjoy a mission, no matter how personal and big.</p><p>Mirage nudges him out of the reverie, pointing at the writhing couple Crypto was watching - “That’s nothing, I get more people using the toilets in here for a quickie than for defec- difecaysh- for shitting.” He frowns decently, before Crypto gets the wrong idea: “I don’t blame them, the price of suites in this building are enough to turn an honest man onto crimes of public indecency.”</p><p>Crypto fails to react to that, finds himself consciously looking away, not wanting to be read in these revealing fuchsia lights. Mirage leans onto the bar, getting close, to compensate for the lack of regard; a polar opposite, always needing eyes on him.</p><p>“Not that I’ve ever done it, I like to treat my dates to a little more class than that. Well I <em>would</em>, anyway,” his voice wavers, a little teary, “If I had one. You know how it is, busy.”</p><p>Crypto hums, rolling the ice around, uncomfortable on Mirage’s behalf.</p><p>“Sorry,” Mirage puts down the glass he’s been polishing for the past five minutes, in some act of declaration, “I know you technically didn’t ask, and I know it’s a surprise because I’m extremely dateable, but you must know. Surely you <em>must</em> know, I’m very single. All this,” gesturing at himself with a disgusting rag, “it’s free real estate.”</p><p>“I find that hard to believe,” Crypto assures, nose scrunching in distaste. It’s a good front, if he could say so himself, as if Crypto hasn’t read every one of Mirage’s online dating profiles in every app he’s signed up for in the past ten years, pseudonyms or not. It qualifies as research, and that’s what he’ll maintain on pain of death. “Surely you must know, I couldn’t care less what you get up to when you’re not stumbling through the arena.”</p><p>“No, but I care <em>you</em>,” Mirage insists, palm hitting chest. Other hand waving at Crypto’s face like it’s personally wronged him, “I’m sure you have like, <em>no</em> game, what with this constant frown and hostu- hostil- assholery but. You- I- Are you um. You’re seeing people. Question mark.”</p><p>Crypto lifts his eyes from his drink, lands them on Mirage’s guileless, hopeful face, backlit by neon lights. Mirage couldn't possibly be insinuating what Crypto thinks he is.</p><p>It’s not that Crypto doesn’t trust Witt, necessarily. It’s more that by necessity, Crypto doesn’t trust anyone. Can’t. Not in this line of work.</p><p>Crypto blames it on such job hazards, both his emotional and sexual immaturity - having been stunted pretty badly from early on. He’s always been a heady kind of guy, from childhood, had barely experimented - on anything but anti-corporate espionage and literal survival. And then there was all of the fucked up upbringing in the various low-life orphanages, juvie, etc. etc.</p><p>The point is that Crypto doesn’t see people. Doesn’t date, hasn’t since the community college he’d mostly skipped through. Hasn’t slept with anyone since, since before he disappeared. It’s fine. He’s fine.</p><p>“Leave off, Witt,” Crypto smirks, pouring himself another from behind the bar, “You couldn’t handle the truth.”</p><p>Mirage retreats an inch, looking a little impressed, and a little stung. His eyes darken gradually under tilted brows - and it weakens Crypto’s poker face pretty immediately. “Call me Elliot,” he says, looking green around the edges.</p><p>Crypto vows to himself that he will never. He suddenly feels hot, grabs his coat from the next stool and pats off most of the grime. It shakes Mirage out of whatever deep thought his one brain cell has managed to conjure up, straightening from his full-body lean.</p><p>“Will you tell me your real name already? Or is it like, if you told me, you’d have to kill me kinda thing?” He frowns with false reservation, “Wait, am I into that? Maybe I’m into that. Is this what it’s like to be a Bond girl?”</p><p>“You’re old, man,” Crypto says, downing his shot. He gets up, eager to get out of this room before his face gives the rest of it away. “Thanks for the drink, and for the save.”</p><p>“Hey, uh- kid,” Elliott calls, and Crypto stops a little too automatically in his tracks. A drunkard knocks into him a little, cursing him out. He turns eventually, reluctantly, a passable save; he had to be careful, his self-control going for dirt cheap these days.</p><p>Elliott’s palming Crypto’s glass in his hand, nervous, rolling it against the grain of the wood. It’s a far cry from the bloodied, rough-handed smooth-talker from the games. The playboy thrill-seeker Crypto had found in the background checks, this was surely not.</p><p>“Come by again sometime,” Mirage says, trying for nonchalant but too heartfelt to be convincing, “After ten. I tag out then. I’ll teach you that trick.”</p><p>It’s a good offer, one Crypto should definitely not take. Not if he had any kind of self-preservation remaining in him. Crypto’s figuring out live, in media res, that he’s not quite ready for this yet — the flirting, the dating, getting plastered on the gossip rags with this new face he’s barely accustomed to himself. ‘Going steady’ Mirage might call it, being ancient. Crypto doesn’t know if he’ll ever be ready.</p><p>But maybe he’s ready for something far less dangerous. Something lighter, more disposable.</p><p>“I don’t know if I’ll need it,” Crypto figures, waving the Apex token secured between his fingers. “Why don’t you come see <em>me</em>, kid, if you want this back.”</p><p>And the gobsmacked look on Mirage’s face is worth all of it, in the end.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Mirage does show up the next day, at Crypto’s place in the champion residence they offer to the majority of the contestants who are deemed lower-class. Crypto is not financially among them, with his steady income of top-3 placings each week, but getting his own place in this unreasonably high-rent city required a more involved process than his second lease on life could handle.</p><p>Mirage brings flowers of all things - carnations - standing an inch from the door when Crypto answers it, smiling like it’s church.</p><p>“Shut up,” Crypto says at that, shaking his head, and pulls Mirage in by the tie - hands sliding easy in his waxed-up curls.</p><p>Mirage’s terrible, faux-vintage jacket hits the floor before the flowers do, the room filling with the cheap sting of dad-cologne that went out of style a year ago - and Crypto’s on top of the dumb motherfucker like a tree, Mirage voicing his assent to the administrations.</p><p>“I love this song,” Mirage is mumbling through the kiss, taking quick little departures from devouring Crypto’s mouth to <em>talk, </em>as he would. “I love this,” he adds, before making a deep noise that settles at the pit of Crypto’s stomach, his hands criminally gentle on the sides of Crypto’s face. It’s all very maddening.</p><p>Crypto turns up the music with a gesture - something off Mila’s old playlist playing in his makeshift sound system, laid out messily in the middle of the living room - but only to drown out the sirens in his own head, informing him of the badness of this idea. The very depths he’s in already.</p><p>It’s so loud in here, breaths gusting between them, as they are backed up towards a surface. Mirage is fucking his impossible tongue very obviously against Crypto’s, drinking him in, eyes slit open and gone tar black as he watches what it’s doing to him: turning him inside out, near-shaking-</p><p>God damn his past self who ever thought he’d be ready for this, for, for Mirage’s <em>man-handling</em> hands dragging down his spine, pinching playfully at the back of his thighs.</p><p>For Mirage’s hard, not un-built body to crowd him against itself, pulling him in too close as if to meld. For him to be walked back onto his own kitchen island and be rucked up against it by the hip, breaths swallowed whole, over and over. For him to be cradled by the waist and the back of his neck like a scene from an old hollywood film, swooning back like the main love interest, as Mirage drags a strip of heat down the side of his throat.</p><p>“You sit around in this barren, psycho apartment all day looking like this, with no one to touch you,” Mirage is demanding, stricken with the injustice. Crypto looks down at himself, self-conscious; his medium black tee with Mirage’s hand in it, and the decade-old, tan jumpsuit pants hung loose because it’s the weekend. He didn’t think Mirage would <em>actually</em> come over.</p><p>The arm around his waist tightens and Crypto’s pulled flat against Mirage’s star-heated front — and oh, Mirage groans low against the friction: “It’s criminal.”</p><p>“You don’t know the half of it,” Crypto growls, a fair warning, ripping the belt out of Mirage’s pants and throwing it on the couch; it’s white and YSL and godawful. Crypto unzips him with contrasting care, making sure to subtly graze Mirage’s front with the back of his fingers in the process.</p><p>“Honey, tell me,” Mirage is slurring, following Crypto’s face and rocking on his heels into the hand - as Crypto categorically ignores him in favor of divulging him fully of his clothes, “Tell me this is. Real for you like it’s for me.” Mirage moans suddenly, hands bruising on Crypto’s hipbone as Crypto tightens his leg around him, “Who am I kidding, I’ll take a lie, I’ll take pity, anything.”</p><p>Crypto is getting kissed desperately, as he removes Mirage’s fancy dress shirt he vaguely remembers being powder blue, and then the undershirt, stretching a bit over his head, to finally reveal bare skin - and. And.</p><p>Oh there have been pap shots, to be sure. Mirage lives at the pool, jogs around the city shirtless at the slightest provocations like temperate weather. There are photoshoots - promotional, for charities, for no apparent reason - Mirage seemingly giving it up like it costs nothing, asking for it, easy for the camera; somehow both come-hither and deeply self-deprecating.</p><p>Now that Crypto has seen the real thing, he vows to find every last pale imitation of a shirtless Mirage out in the world, the internet, the multiverse, and delete them permanently from existence.</p><p>There are scars, photoshopped out in the magazines and TV spots, littered like landmarks on a map across his chest, his abdomen, stretching beneath his briefs. Some from grenades, some from knives, from hot drops. Mirage fights close, his knuckles forever split, and his bruise-ridden body is what he has to show for the tendency. Trophies and paraphernalia that outshine the ones at his station, every mar and stitch a sign of his blinding life, shining through the seams.</p><p>He’s cut, but not unnaturally when he isn’t flexing for the lens, like Picasso lines brushed under the elastic - unruly as everything else. He hasn’t waxed in a minute (of course he waxes) and there’s a smattering of young curls high on his chest, low on his stomach — and Crypto is distantly aware he’s staring, quickly obsessed, compartmentalizing this at terabytes per second-</p><p>“Okay, I haven’t lifted anything in weeks, but hey, <em>you</em> try staying in shape while running a bar and crushing games and being cripplingly alone forev-“</p><p>Crypto presses a kiss to Mirage’s collarbone, pushes his fingers down the full length of Elliott’s torso, silencing him. “Move,” Crypto decides, shoving slightly.</p><p>They fall into his bedroom, the door sliding shut and muting the song, along with the outside world. Mirage is chuckling at Crypto’s quickening pace, looking for kisses like a needy child while Crypto’s busy undoing the tangle of his own belts.</p><p>Crypto headbutts Mirage’s shoulder against the door to keep him still, but it doesn’t quite work -<span class="Apple-converted-space"> Mirage getting in the way, hands roaming across the newly-revealed skin, mouth-watering. He</span> finds the scar flowering from Crypto’s right side, still healing under an alcohol pad - his fingers feathering over the burn, leaving a new trail of goosebumps around it. </p><p>“Tell me this is real,” Mirage asks again, rough-voiced and chasing touch, “Tell me I’m not just another one of your one-night-stands that you’re going to chuck tomorrow for your beloved ones and zeroes,” finding and holding Crypto's head still, imploring.</p><p>Crypto blinks fast, a laugh falling honest and bright from his lips, in disbelief, “You’re not a one-night-stand,” he says.</p><p>As if Crypto has ever had one. As if Crypto has ever felt like this in his life. This joy, this pleasure, this incredible heft. This fleeting, yet crucial event that’s going to devastate him for every next one that follows. “I’m not gonna <em>chuck</em> you,” he assures, grinning helplessly, perhaps shaking a little.</p><p>“Fuck, baby,” Mirage sighs, kisses along Crypto’s shoulder, up his neck, reverent. “Tell me again,” he begs, hands everywhere on Crypto’s back, the ink lines, the chilled metal parts.</p><p>“It’s real,” Crypto admits, shutting his eyes, swallowing. <em>Fuck it</em>, he thinks, it’s not like the truth means anything around here, in this loaned afterlife.</p><p>And though Crypto himself may not be real, not like Elliott R. Witt and his stupid, bleeding heart; his loves and losses, his found and blood family; this night will leave a mark that will last on Crypto’s changed skin as long as he draws breath — and that’s as real as he can afford right now.</p><p>He grasps Mirage by the hair, pulls it to the side to speak into his cheek, his jaw, “It's real.”</p><p>“Oh, <em>fuck</em> me,” Mirage begs, biting down.</p><p>Crypto instead goes to his knees, pulling Mirage’s briefs down with him from the back. Mirage has been hard since he’s walked in the door, leaking, but Crypto couldn’t have known his size just from feel; turns out, it’s sizeable.</p><p>“Wha-?” Mirage asks, surely rhetorical.</p><p>Crypto wastes no time, swallows Mirage whole in one movement, down, down, until he hits resistance.</p><p>“Oh my god,” Mirage remarks, almost matter-of-fact. Crypto throws him a look, finds him undone - mouth open and flushed, eyes gone pitch black. His lashes flutter closed as Crypto sucks him down again, drawing out a fervent, high moan that he could feel at the back of his throat. “Oh, shit, fuh- wait,”</p><p>“What,” Crypto mumbles back with Mirage’s dick on his tongue, before closing his lips around him again, moving forward. It’s good. Very good. He feels carved open like this, divided at the mouth, losing thought with every swallow, and it’s bliss. Mirage puts a shaky hand on the back of his head, fingers caging around him: it’s fucking bliss.</p><p>Crypto grabs Mirage’s hip at an angle and pulls in on the rhythm, licking deep underneath, squeezes his ass cheek - it steadies him, his heartbeat falling in sync with the rest of his machinery.</p><p>“Nn, oh wait, wait,” Mirage pleads through it, breathless, trying desperately to be still, “Give me a sec, I’m gonna-“ he pulls at Crypto’s shoulder, stopping him against all reason.</p><p>Crypto pulls off with a pop, looks up at Mirage, licking at the line of spit still hung on his lip. He tilts his head in question, and Mirage has something like a stroke above him.</p><p>“Can we, um. Slow down a bit,” Mirage asks in a crawling voice, chest heaving from the effort of not going absolutely berserk, stomach gone tight. It puts some pride on Crypto, which is a bad habit he’s learning, from the worst of influences. “It’s my first time. With- with a guy, I mean! Not ever! Just give me a sec and I’ll- I- I’m good.”</p><p>“Get on the bed,” Crypto instructs, pitying.</p><p>Mirage stutters back onto the sheets, eyes not leaving Crypto’s, mesmerized. Crypto uses the temporary power to spell him to turn over, ass up, legs splayed like he’s running. Mirage’s torso is twisted back to look up at him, and Crypto takes a long, long beat to look - Mirage a vision of a pin-up boy - drinking him in.</p><p>Crypto climbs on top of him, gradual, one knee after the other - pins him down by the back of the neck. He tightens his legs over Mirage’s thighs like a vice, clamps down, relishes in the tension. Mirage could easily throw him off, being at a good weight class above him, but he doesn’t.</p><p>“Ohhhh yeah,” Mirage is keening underneath, hips shifting. A hiss of breath pulling in as Crypto holds his wrists on the pillows and grinds down, grimacing at the way his still-sleeved cock fits down the line of Mirage’s tight ass. He’s close already, and all he’s done is suck Mirage off for half a minute. Mirage grinds back, rutting once helplessly into the sheets, “Come on, baby.”</p><p>Crypto shuts his eyes as the words go down hard, feels a weakened tether break somewhere in the darkness of his psyche. He twists Mirage back around to straddle his front, shoves him down, Mirage bouncing a little at the force, tinted red and leering.</p><p>“Oh it’s like that, huh?” Mirage growls, giving as much as he gets. He grasps Crypto’s shirt still twisted around the collar and pulls it off, leans back to appreciate the view. He reaches out for him again but Crypto stops it, takes his wrists again to pin them down, biting up Mirage’s sternum, his adam’s apple, “Hey, go easy,”</p><p>“Hang your easy,” Crypto cuts, vicious and distracted, making no sense. He takes Mirage’s cock in hand and pushes it against his own, grinding, stifling a groan.</p><p>“Hey, hey,” Mirage is saying, voice low and strained, holding Crypto’s thighs down like an anchor. “No one’s dying, hey,”</p><p>Crypto doesn’t stand for it, all this cooing and hawing, too prickly to be domesticated. He’s not in the right state of mind, for any of it - screws gone missing. Not to see Mirage bare and open and golden, laid out for him on his cold, grey sheets. Not to have agency in this, every path cleared for him like a dream: Elliott Witt, finally, gorgeously at his disposal.</p><p>Crypto needs this to be over as quickly as possible, needs it under control - this feeling that’s creeping up at the back of his neck, this stifling intimacy, his embarrassing attraction - all allowed, all freely given. Crypto shuts every sense out against it and concentrates on just Mirage’s arousal and his, them getting off and getting out. Maybe then he could be free of it all.</p><p>Mirage is, inevitably, stronger and stronger-willed. He’s somehow escaped Crypto’s grasp, sitting up, criss-cross - and his free hands have settled calmingly on Crypto’s shivering face, his neck. Mirage's hazel eyes pour into his tunnel vision like the first light in days.</p><p>“You want to top?” Mirage asks, gentle, generous — cutting a hole open in Crypto’s chest, easy as that. Yes, Crypto figures, settling down. That's what he wants. “Come here.”</p><p>Mirage shifts back, leaning up against the headboard, and pulls Crypto in by the waist. He puts a wide hand between Crypto’s thigh and calf, unfolds them, lifting Crypto’s whole weight with a flex of his arm until his stomach meets Mirage’s chin.</p><p>“This what you want, old man?” Mirage is purring, palms warming Crypto’s flanks, dragging Crypto’s briefs down one leg after another, handsy beyond need. Crypto’s calmed breaths hitch back up as Mirage springs his cock out from its confines, thumbs the length with a piercing look.</p><p>Crypto tests Mirage’s grip, flicking his hips slowly so the tip of himself brushes against the rough of Mirage’s beard. Mirage lifts his head at that, lips falling open, eyes closing in surrender — Crypto swallows dry, speechless.</p><p>“Ride me,” Mirage says, clear as crystal. Hands tight around Crypto’s hips, he drags them in to demonstrate - like Crypto needs the help. Like Crypto can’t fucking imagine-</p><p>“F-,” Crypto says eloquently, before pushing his thumb onto Mirage’s pink tongue and pressing down. Then pressing his center in, and in, and in - into the abyss of warmth.</p><p>The first push is shallow, but it still pretty much destroys Crypto where he kneels, like a crook before the cross. Mirage is perfectly still, silent save for a low, involuntary moan at the contact, the invading taste. His tongue moves, as always, to drive Crypto insane.</p><p>Before long, Crypto’s watching himself disappear fully between Mirage’s lips. He does it again, after a retraction, this time for longer, further. It’s unbelievable, both the feeling and the visual. Crypto lifts his other hand to rest carefully in Mirage’s hair, caressing it - Mirage’s own coming up to join his in entangled fingers, tightening the hold.</p><p>And that does it, in the end: the tender, unexpected hand-holding in the midst of the filthiest sight Crypto has ever beheld. It is the last defiance, the last tear in the restraints he’s placed meticulously over every desire, every folly in his wretched body that dared rear its head, dared jeopardize his decade-long plans.</p><p>Crypto’s pushing in again, to the end, hitting the wall - then back out. His jaw is locked, throat releasing a noise he can’t recognize nor hear over the bone-searing pleasure. He nocks his hips in, over and over, sheathing himself into the encompassing hold of Mirage’s mouth. Gone on it. Blinded.</p><p>And Mirage is noisy, as expected: loud and eager and thrilled to be allowed, to be given this. Appreciative for the opportunity. He’s groaning, whistling through his nose with every violation. His hands run urgent along the back of Crypto’s thighs, his ass, the base of his spine. His eyes are open, watery with want, head shaking with the acceleration.</p><p>With a noise of encouragement, he knuckles the base of Crypto’s cock, the sensitive underside — and Crypto jolts, making a wounded sound. “Ah,” he grits, taking Mirage’s head in hands, catching a tear from his cheek in wonder.</p><p>He speeds up. Because <em>fuck</em>. He fucks into Mirage’s swallowing heat until he begins to lose sense, sight, gravity-</p><p>Mirage sucks tight, frowning his pretty brows, taking it like a fucking champion. He wraps his arm around Crypto’s legs, a finger dipping down the crease of his ass. Before Crypto could somehow stop him, get a shuddery word in edgewise, he’s pressing in, unyielding - the hard tip hitting the taut skin between his balls and-</p><p>“Hnn-“ Crypto’s crumbling forward, arcing over Mirage’s head, holding on for dear life. Mirage is still wrenching him in, drinking him down, throat ducking for air, for more - who knows. Crypto certainly lacks the wherewithal to do anything but stutter out a hollow moan or two, as he spills entirely into and over and down Mirage’s unbelievable face: his eyes struck dark and riveted on Crypto’s like a dare.</p><p>Crypto lurches, feverish, a few more times - before extricating himself from Mirage’s pincer hold. Mirage resists a bit as Crypto pulls out, tongue lapping out to follow Crypto’s sated cock, like an addict.</p><p>“Looking good, baby,” Crypto pants, feeble through a raw throat.</p><p>Mirage does, an understatement of the century: something akin to staring directly into the suns, chest glistening with the fatigue of holding back, whole body beating like a heart; arms strained, one around his waist and the other dropped below, his fist hard around his own dick — Crypto doesn’t think he’ll last, standing in this ray of destructive heat.</p><p>Crypto grins, wobbly, wiping Mirage’s lips with his palm, stroking the healing cut on his head - feeling uncharacteristically fond.</p><p>Mirage makes an outraged sound, wraps his free limb around Crypto’s back and flips them over in one fell swoop.</p><p>Crypto lands high on the pillows, huffing, raises his hands immediately to hook onto Mirage’s shoulder-blades. Mirage falls into him like a landslide, breathing heavy and tumultuous in Crypto’s ear. He’s shaking, jittery with relief, able to finally get off now that Crypto’s not bugging out.</p><p>Mirage is at least an inch above him, despite Crypto’s grabbiness, not touching him except for the rigid line of his cock straining against Crypto’s front. His forearms rippling with the effort of keeping himself from getting too close, too crowding. His mouth hovers, open and wet and aching along Crypto’s cheek, “You’re right, this <em>is</em> gonna kill me.”</p><p>“You’ll be fine,” Crypto says, tries to lean up to kiss him, but then Mirage is moving, heaving like he’s lifting the world. He’s staggering, breathing harsh into Crypto’s mouth, hips bucking along the pale strip of skin where Crypto’s leg meets stomach.</p><p>“Oh, ahn,” Mirage enthuses, at just- friction. His arms give out with a groan, sticking skin between them with his dripping precum. Mirage perches on his elbows to eat out Crypto’s placating mouth with impressive fervor, lashes soft and tickling Crypto’s cheeks.</p><p>Crypto opens his legs further, curves one high around Mirage’s thigh, plants his foot to push up - Mirage taking him by the ankle as leverage to drive harder, quicker, overcome.</p><p>“Ah, ah,” he’s crying out, without reserve. The walls in here are thin, but Crypto’s heard worse from his neighbors than Mirage’s dulcet, world-ending moans, dragging deep at the core of the earth. “Fuck, fff- babe, give me. Give me something,” Mirage is saying, quickening his pace, too close, “A letter, a syllable,”</p><p>Crypto’s muscles go numb at the request. He tries to catch his breath - the room suddenly lacking it - as Mirage towers over, rutting desperately into him like choppy waves. He drops his gaze from the sight, then eyes the door, ears ringing.</p><p>‘Danger’, is the sign his dazed, lust-drunk mind throws up. This was <em>too</em> close - in arm’s reach of his dead past, his unjust exile from the world, Mirage's world. The robbery of a dignified life, one not in shadows. One perhaps deserving of something like tonight.</p><p>Crypto gazes up, searches Mirage’s face for some motive, an angle - prepares his heart for that familiar stab of betrayal, an old friend.</p><p>But there’s nothing there, truly. Nary a braincell in this motherfucker at the height of his rapture, starving for something, anything, on his tongue to accompany his physical pleasure. And Crypto, being a giving man, could hardly refuse him.</p><p>“It’s 태,” Crypto gasps, biting his tongue at the foreign feeling.</p><p>Mirage’s face opens. Blinking slow, jaw falling slack, his movements stalling in realization. “Tae,” he breathes, an echo in a cave.</p><p>And Crypto’s heart stops running a mile a minute, slows to a mild sprint. The red and blue lights behind his eyes dissipate under the warm glow of the bedroom lamp, lighting the sides of Mirage’s flank like sunset.</p><p>Crypto can’t really stand this mood for much longer, eyes stinging. And so he moves his waist in a half-circle, brings down his hand to cradle Mirage’s near-bursting cock, closes his eyes — and that gets them back on track.</p><p>“Fuck, Tae, nn, hah-“ Mirage is losing it at the lightest touch, gets louder as Crypto starts stripping him in earnest to match his restarting thrusts. Gathering the lube of his cum to strike the quick, smooth rhythm that makes Mirage lose that unbearable, downy look in his eyes - turns it over to a mask of pure ecstasy, brows furrowing, “Tae, Tae, ah, god,”</p><p>Mirage is shuddering, breaths like a stalling engine, skipping whole minutes, hours - his hips are snapping in off-beat, rubbing velvet between Crypto’s palm and his chest, fast and careless. Crypto’s mouth falls open at the feeling, the debauched revolt of Mirage’s body under his hands. “Witt,” Crypto utters, in reasonable worry.</p><p>Mirage lets out a noise suddenly, like waking up, and he’s coming - almost silent, save for his halting breaths. His eyes are shut tight as his hips ride the crook of Crypto’s legs for the final time, the second, then third. It is a harsh ending, that would total a lesser beast.</p><p>“Oh,” Mirage mutters, teeth opening on Crypto’s palm holding his cheek. He nods ardently, in agreement with it all - encompasses his hand around Crypto’s, holding his cock still, almost grateful. “Oh, Tae.”</p><p>“That was a one-time thing,” Tae says, firm. And Mirage nods again, ever obedient, makes a zipper motion across his beautiful mouth.</p><p>They separate after a long while, an hour or two maybe, of post-coital making out against the headboard, splayed like a baroque painting against the sweaty sheets — that will not go on record, Crypto decides muddily, well-kissed.</p><p>“야,” Crypto throws over to Mirage’s part of the bed, finding him lounging, blissed-out at the foot of it. His hair was a mess, falling on his face youthfully.</p><p>“Hmm?” Mirage hums.</p><p>Crypto pulls his shirt on, forgets what he was gonna say. It had been something a little too honest, too wrought. He amends, opts for diplomacy, “Thanks for coming.”</p><p>“I’ll gladly come again,” Mirage quips, sitting up. His hand travels minutely up where he thinks Crypto’s ass is, under the sheets — it’s his foot.</p><p>There’s a comfortable silence where they’re just looking at each other, and no one’s shooting at them. It’s a rare moment, Crypto tries not to savor it.</p><p>“Look, man,” Mirage starts after what feels like an eternity, careful of this fragile peace, but determined to break it — and Crypto shakes out of his philosophical musings about Mirage’s dick and ass. When Crypto refocuses, Mirage looks sheepish, guilty for some reason, “I know I’m a bit much. I know I’m in your way.”</p><p>Crypto hums, eyeing him suspiciously, “Do you?”</p><p>Mirage flops the comforter on Crypto’s face, deathly serious. Crypto nudges him to go on. “I, uh - I just.”</p><p>It’s not a head injury, this time. It’s not the endorphins from the rush. There’s no one to blame for it: Mirage’s chest is rising and falling like he’s been running, and there’s that fight-or-flight instinct again - prickling at Crypto’s extremities - but he’s pinned down. Cornered like a prey animal.</p><p>“You got me pretty bad over here, you know?” Mirage puts a hand through his hair, glancing at the far wall for aid, “Just know you have every advantage in this. If you’re willing.”</p><p>There’s a hand in Crypto’s own, and Crypto has been too slow and complacent to notice, trapped in the honey-thick words Mirage is spewing like they’re on some, ridiculous reality TV show; he looks down at it now, the weight of it like iron, filling the gaps between his fingers with molten heat.</p><p>“I, um,” Crypto attempts, staring at it. He knows. He knows that he’s not being fair, that he’s being anything but. He’s just not in the position to be giving this away, this, this promise. This- something. And he knows he can’t ask it of Mirage. He doesn't deserve that.</p><p>The thing is, he does want it. The thing is he wants very little, and is willing to do a lot to get it: He wants Mirage to just <em>like</em> him, as much as he does now. To give him guff in the drop ship before a steep fall, to distract him from all of these names and their sins that haunt him as the adrenaline runs dry.</p><p>To let him hold him again when he feels so alone he can hardly breathe — to ask for nothing but to give him that.</p><p>“I’m sorry, I can’t.” Crypto certainly doesn’t deserve such charity.</p><p>But Mirage just shakes his head, “No, no. I’m not-" biting his lip in frustration, "I'm not asking for anything,” shuffling forward, hands quick on Crypto’s shoulder, down his arm - coming to rest on both elbows, held loose in his palms - and there’s only longing on his clean face, only hope. “Just. Whatever you got for me.”</p><p>And Crypto certainly didn’t expect this, of all things, to be the thing that would endanger his grand mission. Just, a growing affiliation, a simple kind of dependency, a simple affection - cultivating like weeds over a month since his infiltration. Crypto now had a connection, a red line linking him to something real, something rooted in this world in which he is barely a ghost.</p><p>Mirage knew Crypto couldn’t lay tracks like this, he had that much sense. But here he stayed, his arms full of a dysfunctional, depressed criminal, still wanting him; Mirage says he wants no promises now, but the soft, persistent strokes of his thumbs on Crypto’s lower back give it away as a lie.</p><p>Mirage was, in actuality, signing up to be maimed, in the end. It figures; coming from the current-standing weekly champion of one of the most dangerous games in the galaxy.</p><p>Crypto breathes through his nose, pained, trying to walk off this critical blow. The din of midnight traffic and the chasing blare of sirens return in a rush, the stereo playing something quieter now outside, crooning.</p><p>“How about a shower,” Crypto says, finally meeting eyes - holding the gaze as some sort of offer, a bit of compensation that he hopes would make up for some part, of all of this. All of him. “And then some food. What do you want?”</p><p>“Whatever, I’ll eat plastic,” Mirage enthuses, kissing him deeply. “I’m gonna join you in the shower though, you know gotta save the environment and all that.”</p><p>Crypto shoves Mirage off him, taking the comforter off the bed to cover his walk to the bathroom. He doesn’t look back as Mirage’s steps follow, stumbling, laughing at his sudden modesty.</p><p>Crypto knows this will hurt, in the end. And it’ll be lasting for both of them, no matter how hard they’ll try to soften it, in the meantime. But Crypto can ensure one thing: that Mirage won’t see it coming. It’ll be the last bit of cowardice he’ll allow himself before his absolution.</p><p>Crypto will disappear again, after he’s made it right. The games will go on, and Mirage will forget him. Find others, all lucky and willing. That’ll be his penance, one worthy of the damage he’s done, on all of it.</p><p>And then. And then Crypto will die with this love, he thinks, one day. Maybe young, maybe as old as Mystik - though it’s doubtful. He thinks about that, hard, careful, hands slipping on Mirage’s back as he’s kissed under the spray of water, still clothed. Still embraced.</p><p>He holds on.</p><p> </p>
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